The Golden Apple: Dinner Theatre Family Style

Fans of Chaffin’s Barn Dinner Theatre here in Nashville — and dinner theatre anywhere — will thoroughly enjoy The Golden Apple: Dinner Theatre Family Style, a new documentary by local filmmaker Charles Fallon, airing tonight, Wednesday, January 21, on NPT-Channel 8 at 9:00 p.m. (rebroadcasting on NPT2 on Friday, January 23 at 9:00 a.m. and Monday, January 26 at. 2:00 p.m.). Fallon’s film goes behind the scenes of The Golden Apple Dinner Theatre in Sarasota, Florida and its 2003 production of “Damn Yankees,” following theatre owner Robert Turoff and actors Gary Marachek and Chris O’Brocto, as well as other performers, stagehands and everyone else involved. What’s most fascinating and entertaining — and magical — is that the entire production is put together in a mere 10 days.

Fallon, who once worked at the Golden Apple and teaches at Watkins College of Art and Design, told the Sarasota Herald Tribune‘s Jay Handelman that he “thought (Turoff) was amazing and the entire family was very unusual.”

“The fact they have owned and run this theater for as long as they have is amazing.”

The Golden Apple Dinner Theatre, at the time the film was completed, was one of only 13 remaining Equity dinner theatres in the country. It remains the longest running.